The Factory Design Pattern
You can safely skip this section on first reading, as it simply describes how and why you use a design pattern with the JAXP library.
If you implement an XML parser in the most straightforward way, code that uses the parser will need implementation-specific knowledge of the parser (such as its classname). That's very undesirable. The whole XML initiative is intended to free your data from single platform lock-ins, so having your code tied to a particular parser undermines the objective. The Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) takes special steps to insulate the API from the specifics of any individual parser.
This makes the parser “pluggable,” meaning you can replace the parsers that come with the library with any ...
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